Aging TV stars grind it out in two new comedies

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This article was published 29/09/2015 (4042 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a big night for handsome TV actors of a certain age.

Two of Hollywood’s best-preserved ’80s-era leading men — Rob Lowe and John Stamos — are front and centre as stars of a back-to-back pairing of new Fox comedies that play well to the actors’ strengths, but are very different in terms of their themes and, more importantly, their chances of success.

First up is Grandfathered (7 p.m., Fox and Citytv), in which Stamos plays Jimmy, a committed 50-year-old bachelor who runs a successful L.A. restaurant and spends his off hours dating younger women and keeping himself tanned, fit and free of grey hair.

He talks about wanting a family, but only as a way of impressing potential dates. And then one day — very early in the series pilot — a guy named Gerald (Josh Peck) walks into the restaurant and announces that he’s the son Jimmy never knew he had.

And before Jimmy can pick his jaw up off the floor, Gerald adds a quick oh-and-one-other-thing in the form of his baby daughter, Edie (played by twins Layla and Emilia Golfieri), which vaults Jimmy from parenthood to granddad-dom in head-spinningly rapid fashion.

It turns out that Sara (Paget Brewster), the woman Jimmy dated a quarter-century ago, had a child shortly after their breakup and now that child — Gerald — has suddenly decided it’s time to get to know his father.

What follows is as charming as it is predictable. Jimmy struggles at first to accept this massive change in his life, but then buckles down and decides to become the best darned father/grandfather that he can.

That process includes cutesy scenes of Jimmy learning how to change a diaper and put a baby to bed; there’s also the obligatory small-child health-crisis moment that tests Jimmy’s mettle and proves, once and for all, that he’s fully invested in this new stage of his aging-bachelor existence.

It’s actually a watchable half-hour, but at the end, one is left wondering what Grandfathered could possibly have left to say. All the available jokes have been told, and Jimmy’s the changed man that he necessarily had to become. Grandfathered is a show that feels like it reaches old age in its opening instalment.

Its companion piece, The Grinder (7:30 p.m., Fox and Citytv), arrives with a similar level of charm and much greater potential for a longer prime-time life. Lowe plays Dean Sanderson Jr., a small-town guy who left Idaho many years ago and became a big-time Hollywood TV star. After several seasons as the lead in a hit courtroom drama, he has returned home to visit with his family and figure out what to do next.

Everyone in Boise is thrilled to see him except his younger brother, Stewart (Fred Savage), who has been toiling as a real-life lawyer while Dean was getting rich and famous as a make-believe one. Now, just as he’s ready to take over the family law practice — dad Dean Sr. (William Devane) is retiring — the last thing he needs is his showbiz-phony sibling messing up the plan.

And when Dean decides he wants to watch his actual-attorney brother at work — and then figures his TV-lawyering experience should give him latitude to offer courtroom advice to Stewart — tensions quickly rise.

The problem — for Stewart, at least — is that Dean might actually have something to add. Where the actor is smooth, polished and charming, his kid brother is nervous and almost completely lacking in confidence, relying on index cards to help him stumble and stutter his way through his courtroom arguments.

In the end, of course, they learn that they need each other. But where Grandfathered’s pilot feels like the closed-book ending to a completed tale, The Grinder has lots of room to move beyond its première episode.

Lowe is very strong in the title role, making full use of the comedy chops and timing that made him a welcome addition to the Parks and Recreation cast, and Savage is a great fit as the stay-at-home brother who reluctantly admits that he has a few things to learn from his perhaps-not-so-superficial sibling.

Finding out what happens next will be anything but a grind.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @BradOswald